Empire of Mud

by James Suriano

  “Ousha took care of all that, no? When she dropped into your hearing?” She cackled, then couldn’t catch her breath. She doubled over and ended her fit with a huge cough. “Oh, what I would have done to trade places with you. He must have wet himself when he saw the woman who knew all his secrets tear open his privacy. She wrecked him with that, you know. Split him wide. I wouldn’t be surprised if he jumped off one of those towers.” She looked toward the mainland.

  I covered Ruka’s ears.

  “There isn’t a—”

  Minrada cut me off and held up a finger. “There is always a way. And I’m not done with him, because behind Mohamed is a string of gems I intend to collect. He’s one little piece of shit propped up by his father. But the men he’s been with … Ooooouuuee, it’s like someone took me to the racetrack and gave me all the winners to bet on in advance.” She leaned into me and clenched her fist. “But I need that book. And you’re just the person who can get it.”

  Minrada pulled a pack of cigarettes from her dress, lit one, and examined the fiery orange tip. “I always knew you would be an asset. And if you want, your daughter can stay with me. I’ll keep her busy.” The smoke curled around her smile, and I knew I was deeper into this than I ever wanted to be.

  …

  When I reached Mohamed’s house, only the lights in the driveway were on and his car was in the driveway. I crept between the two houses until I stood before the door that led to the utility hallway. What I’d remembered from being on the other side of it was that any time it was opened it would catch and have to be pulled hard or it wouldn’t fully latch closed. I tapped the bottom of the door to scare off any scorpions, then slid my fingers into the space between the bottom of the door and the concrete slab. Bits of stone jabbed under my nails, but I forced my fingers forward to get a grip on the door. When the first joints of my fingers bent at the other side, I pulled. The door moved. I pulled harder; it let loose, and I tumbled backward, the door flying open and hitting the bushes behind it. Inside, the hallway was dark, with a lingering smell of rot and bleach mixed together. The light from the outside went only a meter in. My footsteps were relying on memory. I reached the ladder and heard susurrant words. The darkness and closed quarters made it difficult to figure out where the man was who spoke them.

  Ever so quietly, I climbed the ladder. Ruka was with Minrada, and I had something to find. I couldn’t spend time righting the misdeeds of Mohamed. He would always operate at a level above the law and morality, and his punishment wouldn’t be from the authorities but from the gods themselves. Once I reached the top of the ladder, I crawled until I reached the door to Mohamed’s room. There was no light from the other side. He could have been sleeping; I had no way to know what was over there. I was sure if I opened the door and he woke up, he would kill me. I began to sweat and feel closed in; my hand was on the knob to open the door, but my hand wouldn’t obey. I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering, then turned the knob and pulled the door open. The house smelled like a mixture of thick dust and unwashed clothes. I listened for anything. Breathing, clothing against leather, even the tick of a watch. Nothing. I stepped in; a sliver of light came through the curtains from the streetlights. I knew where the couch was, and under the middle cushion was the compartment that held the book. My leg struck a table, creating an echoing bang. I froze. If anyone was in the room, they would be awake now. I held my breath, trying to detect motion. The light flickered from the outside, the wind moving the trees between the house and the streetlights. My legs moved again, and then my hand was in the compartment until I felt the texture of the cover I had remembered. I opened the book and felt the sticky clear plastic that covered each of the photos.

  A thud outside the door in the hallway. The sound of a heavy load of cloth being dropped. Quickly I was back in the utility space and closed the door behind me. I put the book under my arm and descended the ladder with my left arm. When my foot touched the floor, I thought of Maryam on the other side of the wall. I knew Mohamed would never go into my room to retrieve her, if he had even come back. Her sweet face tugged at my heart, the way her lips cooed at me. I hope she had taken all the love I had poured into her during her brief stay with me.

  I felt my way back to the utility door and pushed it open. I thought words were coming from behind me. Maybe instead it was the creak of the door or the wind blowing the neighbors’ yacht into the mooring posts. My mind was jumbled with fear, and I knew not to trust all the things it told me.

  “Help.” The word was distinct, crisp. It was him, the man I’d heard earlier.

  I could run away from this house forever, leaving the nightmare of it behind, back to my Ruka and then my home. Or I could stay and delay the Nirvana I was on the precipice of achieving and help whoever was behind this voice.

  “Please, it’s me.” His voice reminded me of the way the people in my village sounded when they’d coughed for months from tuberculosis.

  I set the album against the doorframe and let the darkness envelop me. The decision to walk into the darkness this time wasn’t frightening. I met the junction where the hallway narrowed and went behind my room. I paused. I could see nothing with my eyes, but everything with my mind. When I reached him, there was the smell of human excrement and filth, but I held my mind above it. His hand touched me first. The rough, dry fingertips. I met him with my hands, and he led me to his restraint: a single shackle around his ankle. My fingers felt the keyhole.

  “I don’t have the key,” I said.

  He didn’t respond. I patted his greasy hair and climbed the ladder to Mohamed’s room. The booming in my head from my heartbeat made it hard to listen for other noises. I went through the hidden door and flicked lamps on. Somewhere in the base of my skull rose a power from knowing what Mohamed had done, that whatever weapons he wielded now would slice back at him. The room looked ransacked. His expensive books were pulled off the walls; all the cabinets were open; and the table I had run into was oddly out of place. I pressed my ear to the door to the hallway before I opened it. Mohamed was lying on the floor and was breathing, a syringe next to him. The hallway had dirty dishes piled up in it with rotting food. I passed them, zooming from room to room, searching for keys. The formal dining room was the only room that had kept its composure. Full place settings, a vase of fake flowers in the middle of the table, dim lights. When I stood and looked into that room, I could imagine dinner guests were five minutes away, I was behind the wall preparing Maryam to be quiet and ferrying trays of succulent dishes from the kitchen. I let those thoughts go; they were from a past that never would manifest again. I rounded the corner to the kitchen and clenched my teeth as I pushed the door open. My vision zoomed into the cabinet where the safe was hidden. It was open, as was the safe door. Inside was my passport. I thanked the gods; I’d received my reward for coming back to help the shackled man. I took my passport and the few dinar bills next to it. I could use these to get Ruka out of the country. Then I opened drawers, looking for keys. Where would Mohamed keep them?

  I went to the laundry room. My body wanted to open the door to my old room, but I knew that was a door to a piece of my life that should always stay closed. The storage crates in the laundry that normally neatly hid the door were tipped over, and my first step in crunched over their contents. The door was haphazardly boarded with strips of wood and random nails.

  I didn’t want to go past Mohamed again, even if he was passed out, but I had no choice.

  I stood over him, looking at the man I was so impressed with upon first meeting. Now he was a collapsed soul under the weight of his excess. There was a bulge in his wrinkled blue pocket. I knelt, waved my hand over his face, and snapped. No response. I pushed my fingers in and found his leather wallet. I opened it and searched through the thick layer of dinars, credit cards, and his government identification. A glimmer at the bottom of the bills. A key. I pulled them all out, and they fell across his stomach. It was half the size of a normal key. I thought about the
mini keyholes all around his room; I bet the key matched those and the shackle too. I took the key and the bills. Mohamed hadn’t paid me in full, I rationalized.

  I was in the darkness again, my mind filing in the blanks of what I couldn’t see. Inesh walked with me the whole way, his eyes coveting the key that would have been his freedom if someone had found him earlier.

  “I think I have the key,” I told the young man.

  I was right, and it unlocked the restraint. I helped him stand. He was weak and leaned heavily on me, limping to the door. When we were outside, the album under my arm, I closed the door to contain the evil in the house. He pressed his back against the house; it was the first time I could see him. He was very young, a teenager from my country; his face was sunken, his lips cracked.

  “Here.” I directed him to the hose spigot so he could drink fresh water. “I don’t know what I can do for you. I’m escaping myself.”

  When he came up from drinking, he pushed his hand toward me. “It’s my punishment for who I am. You shouldn’t have saved me.”

  How could he think for a moment this was his fault?

  “This ogre has beaten us both down,” I said. “Our situation tells us only of him and nothing of ourselves.”

  “What do I owe you?”

  I handed him the dinars I had taken from Mohamed. “Only that you get someplace safe.” I touched his face, then fled. I walked quickly down the empty streets; it must have been early morning now. A golf cart appeared behind me, one of the community security staff. I wouldn’t turn around, not now. The guard yelled something I didn’t understand.

  I pulled out Ousha’s passport and held it up so he could see I was a US citizen. He sped past me and waved.

  Under the bridge, I went to the board that Minrada had moved last time and knocked on it. She slid the board open and appeared. “Your daughter is sleeping.” Her eyes were fixed on the album. “Let me see it.”

  I didn’t give it to her; it was my only power, the way I would make Minrada arrange passage for us.

  “Let me see Ruka,” I said.

  “It’s your choice, but she needs her sleep. Come look.”

  I pulled myself into the space. Minrada cast a light in her direction. “You see?”

  Ruka’s dreams were animating her sleep, but she was as Minrada had said.

  “You can sleep too.” Her eyes returned to the album. “I won’t mislead you—I do have one more thing I need from you.”

  No reaction was always the best stance with Minrada. She would seize on the smallest expression and use it to her advantage.

  “I need you to identify the men who went to Mohamed’s house to do the unspeakable acts.”

  I dug my nails into my hand; the pain kept the rest of my body still.

  “The time you were there, the men coming and going, the violence. There is a case against these men and the judge will want to hear your testimony. He’ll especially want to hear it from two unrelated people.”

  “They won’t believe me, and those poor men, why? Plus, it will implicate your husband.”

  It was the first time I’d seen Minrada’s jovial sarcasm vanish. The tight noose she always used to wrangle conversations lay shredded at her feet.

  I opened the book to the page of her husband and handed it to her. She looked over it. It was a solitary picture of him, smirking and playful. He was the color of lightly toasted coconut; his long fingers held his drink. The starched collar of his white cotton shirt paralleled the strong line of his jaw. Nothing in the picture gave away his location or intentions.

  “This doesn’t mean anything.” Her tone was defensive.

  I knew different, but didn’t care enough to argue the point. She had what she’d asked for.

  She slammed the book shut; a few bodies around us rustled in response. The look on her face was the look of my mother when my father had died. Heartbreak.

  “The feeling will pass. You will go on,” I offered.

  “But his feelings won’t pass. He always said he loved me.”

  “You deal in secrets all the time. Didn’t you think others do the same? There are secrets, and there is love and sometimes they occupy two parallel places.”

  Minrada set the album down, opened a blanket, and invited me to lie next to her.

  …

  Water was everywhere. Soaking my clothes and invading my mouth. The wave would come next. An ominous specter behind me that I couldn’t see. The cries of worry rose. My shoulders shook. “Mama, wake up.”

  I opened my eyes and sat up. Adjusting to the darkness, I pulled my hand to wipe water off my face. My hand was wet; my clothes were wet.

  “Mama, the water.” Ruka’s voice was panicked, and she clung to me.

  “Minrada?”

  There was splashing but no answer. I knew the opening we had come through was only a meter from where we slept. I tried to keep calm and orient myself. I crawled over the space, my fingers went down into the water until I felt the board. I strained to move it, but it wouldn’t budge. Maybe I had the wrong board. I went beyond it, I was sure I was too far now, and then my hand touched the wet stone of the connection where the bridge met the land.

  Where was everyone?

  “Mama, the water is getting higher.”

  I felt the water at my chest.

  The bridge arched over the canal. We were at the bottom; if we could get out of here, maybe we could move to higher ground. I touched the stone once more, pointed my head in the opposite direction, took Ruka’s hand, and crawled. As we moved higher, we saw waving lights and finally reached the top. A few people were huddled around an opening that looked through to the water below.

  “Can you swim?” one of the men asked us.

  I nodded.

  “It’s still rising,” he said. “You might want to go. But the police are waiting for us at the shore. They flooded the canals to get us out. Someone must have complained.”

  “Let’s go.” Ruka was pulling at me.

  “No, we’ll be arrested.”

  “But if the water reaches any higher, the current will make it hard to swim out. It’s a wager,” the man said.

  I appreciated his experienced voice. My mind flipped through our options. In the few seconds I had to make this decision for our lives, I tried to grasp what the outcomes of those decisions might look like. Water had taken everything from us in the past. I saw Pramith standing in front of our neat home, with a vegetable garden in front of it and a goat. In the next thought I saw the broken power line that lay across a washed-away piece of earth. I decided I could work through anything if I was alive. The space was only big enough for one person at a time to jump through, and the water wasn’t far away now.

  “I’ll jump first,” I told Ruka. “Then you come right away.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  I fit my legs through and let my body fall. When I submerged into the water, I remembered the passports I had in my pockets. I kicked my legs and felt around for them. They stuck with me, a good omen. There was a spotlight on me, the light making it impossible to see up to the bottom of the dark bridge. When Ruka splashed down next to me, she quickly came to the surface. She was a strong swimmer; I knew she would have no problem making it to shore. We swam toward the light because we didn’t have a choice. Our feet touched the sand, and before we were even clear of the canal, strong hands grasped our arms, forcing us into submission with a group of others who must have spent the night with us under the bridge.

  Minrada wasn’t there. Had she escaped some other way?

  The spotlight was fixed on where we had come from. Three more bodies dropped into the water, and the police retrieved them.

  Ruka huddled into me, shivering, half from fear and half from being soaked. “What will they do with us?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but …” I put my hand to her ear so only she could hear me. “You will take my name, and I’ll take the name Ousha. Those are the documents I have.”

  The pol
ice came to us and tapped all the men on the head to stand up. Then they led them up the shore and away, beyond where I could see. Once they were gone, they had us stand and led us to the roadway. The homeowners stood like an audience waiting for the first act to arrive. The police roughly directed us to stand in a line.

  One by one, the homeowners pointed at us. The police nudged the first few forward, and the women and young girls walked with them.

  A woman, whose face was covered, pointed to me, then moved her finger back and forth to signal Ruka too. I took Ruka’s hand and stepped forward. We followed her to the back of the crowd. The woman opened her purse and pulled out what would have been two years of wages for me and put it in another woman’s hand, whose head also was covered. When I passed her, I kept my face on the back of my new master’s head.

  “Don’t forget what you owe me.” I turned to see Minrada smiling at me.

  Enslaved?

  I realized Dubai was a city where people like me were in a circle they could never really leave.

  There was one apartment building at the end of Al Hilali. We approached the main doors to the lobby, and the woman we’d been following turned to us and pointed to a small pathway. There was a sign written in Sinhala and a language I didn’t recognize that read, SERVICE ENTRANCE.

  “I am Fata. You go to floor ten.”

  We stepped off the elevator, and Fata stood in front of open double doors flanked by two lion statues. Inside, the brown-quartz streaks through the floor tile looked like a crooked path. Fata didn’t stay within them; instead, she gestured broadly and her presence owned the house.

  “The main reception,” she said. The round room we were in had a round brown leather couch and glass threads of bubbled amber glass, lit from the inside, flowing up and connecting into the light fixture in the ceiling.

  Fata walked through an archway deeper into the apartment. The hallway widened, its walls covered with pictures of a family: a husband and wife and two children. We hadn’t seen Fata’s face yet, but I assumed it was her in the photo. There were several doors farther down the hall, and I spotted a bright open living space with couches, chairs, and thick rugs. The coloring in the quartz was deeper here, and it gleamed from the sun through the windows, coming up from behind the skyline. The views over the water made me want to take a seat and watch.